


Once Upon A Time

by AndyAO3



Series: Clockwork Detectives and Imported Antiques [3]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst and Humor, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Relationship, Sad Robots, no one is happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-11
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-06-01 17:41:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6529744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndyAO3/pseuds/AndyAO3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Li is not okay. Usually he's pretty good at pretending he is, but around Nick? Not so much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. fallen down

**Author's Note:**

> ARGH I TRIED TO POST THIS BUT AO3 ATE IT. WHY, AO3. WHY DO YOU FORSAKE ME. If it shows up in my drafts later apropos of nothing I am going to gnaw on my desk out of frustration. I had a bunch of neat tags too, fucking AO3 and fucking fuckerfuck.
> 
> WHATEVER. I made edits to it now. Maybe it'll be nicer this time anyways. This'll probably come to about six chapters or so if the boys actually listen to me. I have another chapter ready to be posted that is almost entirely dialogue because I couldn't get them to shut up, so, we'll see how well that goes.

They'd brought Kellogg down, along with all his synths. There was a smoking hole where the merc's cybernetics-enhanced heart had been, and the synths that weren't scorched to hell and back by laser fire and leaking coolant onto the carpet were twitching on the floor from the last remaining currents of a pulse grenade coursing through their systems.

When it was all over, Li dropped Danse's overcharged laser rifle - the barrel was hot in his hands, felt like it was searing his palms even though he knew it wasn't - and fell to his knees. By the time Nick got to his side, the he was shaking like an old screen door in a storm.

"Easy now, it's all right," Nick murmured. Li had choked out a laugh at that, shaking his head. Nick fished out a stimpak from inside his coat, but stopped himself when he'd seen that Li was uninjured.

God, that damn gun Kellogg had used. Li's ears were still ringing from the sound it had made, and the big room they'd fought in had only acted as an echo chamber for the sound with its high ceilings and open construction. Carpet only did so much to muffle something like that. And the stealth field-- God, he hadn't seen one of those being used in years. It hadn't helped, setting him on edge more than he'd already been. Reminded him too much of the old stealth suits, with that same telltale shimmer and quiet rising panic as he jumped at every hint of movement out of the corner of his eye.

He heard Nick sigh like it was coming from far away even though he could feel the synth's bad hand on his shoulder, and then there was a shifting of fabric as Nick's hand fell away only to be replaced by a warm, comforting weight draped over him.

Nick's coat, he realized. It was so warm even though the stale air of the room was so cold, leaving his hands feeling chilly and stiff. It helped.

"Take your time," Nick told him. That helped too.

Several long minutes later, after Li had gotten everything he could off of the computer and onto his pip-boy and taken the time to painstakingly pry out Kellogg's cybernetics with a screwdriver (they had to be worth a fair amount of caps to someone, didn't they?), stuffing them into a portable cooler lined with newspaper, they left the building. Nick mumbled something dark that sounded like a quote from something as they both eyed the Brotherhood of Steel's blimp, filling the sky like an omen; Li didn't know what it was from, but he had to agree with the sentiment. He'd met Danse. Gotten himself a nice laser rifle out of it, but the biggest egos always came with the nicest toys, didn't they?

A man had to have quite the ego to name his gun Righteous Authority. A group had to have quite the ego as a whole if they were travelling in a goddamn blimp. Li didn't trust men with big egos who thought their cause was righteous, it got people killed. Thankfully, Nick seemed to agree.

Li was glad for that. He'd heard how Danse and the other two had spoken of synths. They wouldn't take kindly to Nick; they were more focused on what someone was than who they were as a person. And Nick was the kind of man who would run off after a stranger to help them find their son because it was the right thing to do, even if that stranger themselves wasn't sure what the right thing to do would actually be.

If Li had his way, men like Danse would never get anywhere near Nick Valentine. Even if Li wasn't quite sure how he'd be able to stop them, he'd find a way. Because Nick Valentine cared about Li's broken, false family more than Li did himself, and that made him a good man-- a rare thing in this new world. Just about as rare as functioning space heaters.

Looking back, Li would see that thoughts like those should've been his first hint.

The trip back to Diamond City gave him plenty of time to compose himself, even if there were enough little jolts along the way to keep him on his toes. There was no shortage of things that wanted the pair of them as chew toys - and Li in particular as a snack - so he wasn't able to truly let his guard down until they got in the city gates. By the time they got there, it was almost nightfall; the city's lights were like a beacon in the encroaching darkness, and Li couldn't help but feel relieved by the sight as he descended into the market square.

"Should get somethin' to eat," Nick said. "I can head to Publick Occurrances on my own, get Piper up to speed on what's going on. Or it could wait 'til morning, if you'd prefer a good night's sleep."

"I'm fine, Nick." Now there was a blatant lie. But Li didn't feel like eating, or sleeping. He wasn't sure he could manage either. Though he could go for a drink, or a dose of Med-X.

Nick hummed, disapproval written clearly into his features as he paused on the steps and craned his neck to glance back at Li skeptically. "I can respect what you're tryin'a do here, bud, but you ain't a machine. What good does it do your son if you wear yourself out before you can find him?"

There it was, that most important of carefully maintained lies that Nick had been so quick to help him with. The one that had him working to the point of bone-deep exhaustion because some part of him was convinced it was the right thing to do, and good people always did the right thing over the selfish one. Nick had to know it wasn't true, but not once had the detective called him on it.

He thought that maybe, just maybe, Nick understood. Understood that it was easier - better - to throw himself into a cause he didn't care about than to accept that he'd been thrust into a world that wasn't ever going to be a good fit for him, when his own world was never going to come back to him. Maybe Nick was helping him keep up appearances because he understood that sometimes, appearances were all a person had to keep themselves relatively sane. Or maybe Nick had some silly idea rattling around in his head that it was the thought that mattered, and at the very least it was clear that Li was trying to be a good person.

So Li smiled, and gave in. The farce would be allowed to continue for another day. "You're right, of course," he said. "Not that it makes it feel any less like a waste of time, but I'm too tired to try and argue with you."

Nick smiled to show his approval, tipping his hat in acknowledgment. "Get some sleep, Li."

And miraculously, Li was eventually able to. With the help of a few beers, anyway.

\---

The worst part of sleeping was dreaming. When Li slept that night, he dreamed he was dying.

He was buried in snow. Everything was cold, cold, _cold_. The snow crushed him under its weight - the rise and fall of his chest with each labored breath felt like a thousand thick needles being jammed into his ribcage - yet somehow he could still see the sky, how more snow was still falling. When he breathed, he breathed ice; he would choke, and cough, and the ice would come back up in his throat as blood.

Then, just as he felt that he was on the very edge of death, he 'woke'-- but he was still dreaming.

He was on a bench at a police precinct. His waking mind would recognize it as a childhood memory, but when he sat up on the bench, he was an adult; his feet reached the floor, and his hands were larger than they had been as a child.

He still had all of his fingers, in the dream. He always did. Although in this particular case, when he looked at his left hand, his pinky finger was black and swollen-- bent unnaturally from a bad break, and then frostbitten. All of his fingers had gone at least a little bit bluish-pink at the tips from deathly cold, but none so badly as the last on the left. It didn't hurt, though. Somehow, the dream-logic of his subconscious had decided that it shouldn't.

"Hey, kiddo," a voice said. A man's voice, warm and gentle and thick with cigarettes. The man that it belonged to had been leaned against a wall nearby, and now approached him with hands jammed lazily into pockets. This man had brown eyes, and dark hair, and scruff, but he looked young. Younger than some disconnected thought in the back of Li's mind said he should. "Nice nap?"

"I... I suppose," Li replied. His voice was his adult voice.

A smile, crooked and lazy, pulled at the man's features. Li couldn't remember his name. "Good to hear," he said. "We called home, and your big sister's gonna be here to pick you up soon."

Li stared up at the man from his position on the bench. He felt calm, safe in this place. "Thanks, I think," he mumbled.

The man's smile turned sad, but fond. "Sorry about all this trouble you've been through. I had a talk with your sister while I was on the phone with her, about seein' if your parents couldn't maybe get you to a different school. I poked through some census data, and there's a couple charter schools in the area with better, uh... Demographics, d'you know that word?"

Li nodded slowly.

"Yeah. More people like you, is what I'm tryin'a say. It ain't much, and I dunno about the teachers or anything. But I figure it'd be better, y'know?"

"You're nicer than most police officers, aren't you?" Li asked him. The man blinked like the question had taken him off-guard, and then he chuckled. It sounded familiar, beyond the context of the memory. Just on the edge of waking, Li struggled to think of why.

"Maybe I'm just weird like that for thinkin' cops should be nice," the man said.

Then the dream ended. Li woke after just four hours of sleep, in a dark musty room at the back of the Dugout Inn, and didn't get back to sleep for the rest of the night. In the fleeting moments after he'd woken up he thought that maybe, maybe the dream was significant. But within ten minutes he'd forgotten both the dream and that thought entirely.

The only thing that stuck with him about it was that he wasn't sure whether to count it as a nightmare or not.

\---

Nick was the one who came up with the Memory Den idea. He led Li to Goodneighbor, and Li remarked that if they'd just told him to head to where the old state house was, he would've been able to find it on his own. Nick had gotten a chuckle out of that, said that maybe he'd figured Li could use the company.

"Yes, because that doesn't sound like flirting at all," Li had replied.

"Can't help it, it's a tic. Happens when I see a pretty face."

"Mister Valentine, I'm hurt. Am I really no more than a pretty face to you? I thought you were better than that."

"Aw, well, maybe not _just_ a pretty face. Nice figure too." Then Nick had to duck to avoid his hat getting knocked off by the smack Li aimed at it, chuckling.

This was them, all the way from Diamond City to Goodneighbor. Nick pulling Li out of the way of a suicider; Li popping a feral's head with a shot from his laser rifle as it came within spitting distance of giving Nick's chassis some extra ventilation with its rotted teeth. They fought things, they bantered, then they fought things some more. Their banter never involved anything important, falling instead into an easy back-and-forth that Li found to be a welcome relief from having to actively force himself to calm down between shootouts.

He also resolved not to dwell on the flirting, knowing full well that Nick probably wasn't either. That, too, came with the territory.

They got in Goodneighbor's front door and Li decided he liked the place the moment he saw the ghoul mayor - who looked like a stiff breeze would blow his tiny frame right over - step out and stab a would-be human mugger. Nick huffed at the following exchange, shaking his head as Li brought out linguistic quirks he hadn't felt the need to use since he was in college and up to his bloodshot eyeballs in mentats and coffee. The mayor seemed to appreciate it, at least.

He had a fleeting thought of what it would have been like had Nick known him when he was younger, straining coffee through a threadbare-but-clean sock and grinding up grape mentats with the end of a hairbrush to pour into it. The thought made him laugh aloud as he was looking at KLEO's shelves for a shorter barrel and better grip for his laser rifle, and Nick gave him a peculiar look. He said instead that he was imagining the sort of havoc Nick's poor aim would cause if given a mini-nuke launcher.

Nick shot back that at least he could carry the damn thing without having to prop it up on something.

Really though, they were stalling. The Memory Den was right there, and the insulated little box with the cybernetic bits in it felt like a lead weight in the sack over Li's shoulder. Eventually, they had to face the music.

Li went in first, holding the door open for Nick in an overblown display of chivalry that may have included a sweeping Western-style bow just to get a laugh out of the detective. They spoke to a woman named Irma draped over a couch in the front parlor, however briefly (and Nick didn't miss a chance to flirt with her, either, so Li felt entirely justified in thinking it was just something Nick did), then headed through a door in the back to what seemed like a kind of backstage area, then down a flight of stairs that sagged and creaked with age.

The person they were looking for - Doctor Amari - was a willowy slip of a woman in a ragged labcoat. She was kept company by two memory loungers, a plush couch, an entire wall of computer bits, and a whole mess of surgical equipment scattered across a number of tables that had been pushed to the sides of the room. She knew Nick well enough that she wasn't afraid of him when he came in the door; Li took that as a good sign.

What Li didn't take as a good sign was Nick sitting down in Amari's chair with the intent to hook up to the cybernetics they'd pulled out of Kellogg. In fact, it was the very opposite of good.

It scared the hell out of him.

"Nick, are you sure about this?" he asked.

"Sure as anything, bud," Nick answered, looking up at him from under the brim of that tattered hat. "Don't worry about me. I'm well past the expiration date anyways."

No, no. That wasn't right. Not at all.

Amari took off Nick's hat, setting it neatly on a table. Nick looked so bare and sad without it; he smiled at Li in a way that Li knew was meant to be reassuring. It wasn't.

Why? Why was Nick consenting to this? Attaching himself to Institute technology, the very ones that had made him, that could've easily worked viruses or failsafes or anything into their machines-- for what? For a child who had spent so long with his surrogate parents that he probably wouldn't recognize Li as his father at all, let alone see it as a rescue? For the sake of Li maintaining his lie?

Well, it was stupid. It wasn't worth it.

"Stop," Li said. Amari's delicate fingers halted just short of plugging the detective into her machines; both she and Nick looked up sharply at him.

Nick frowned. "What's the matter? I told you, it's fine."

"No it isn't." Li's words sounded petulant even to his own ears. He didn't care. "There has to be another way. One that doesn't involve Nick risking himself."

"If you've got a better idea, I'm all ears," Nick said. "Otherwise, I'm not sure we're gonna get another chance at this."

Li ignored him, turning to Amari. "Doctor, do you have any sort of cold storage you could keep the relevant cybernetic parts in?"

"I do," the doctor conceded, "but while I do share your reluctance, I must admit that the detective's reasoning is sound. This may be our only option for the foreseeable future."

"I don't care. Do whatever you can to keep it preserved."

Nick heaved himself up from the chair, his frown having deepened considerably. He took Li by the arm with his metal hand. "So you're just gonna quit?"

" _Yes_." It took little effort for Li to wrench his arm free; Nick hadn't had much of a grip on him. He could think of a thousand reasons why, but right then he wasn't focused on that. "If the Institute has had my son for the past ten years, they're not about to kill him in the next few days or weeks or months out of spite. Clearly they took a child from a vault for a reason. My guess is genetic purity, but who can say for sure but them? The point being, I'm not going to lose him if I wait."

Nick's expression softened to something Li couldn't quite read. "Li," he started to say.

But Li wasn't done. He shook his head, cutting off Nick's thought - whatever it was - before it had a chance to be heard. "I'm not risking anyone else in this," he said firmly. "I've lost enough. I don't want to lose you, too."

There. The lie was broken. Li exhaled a long, steadying breath.

"Now if you two will excuse me," he said, "I'm heading to the Third Rail for a drink."

 


	2. memory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was intending to post another chapter of something else today, but then this little incident here http://logicalfangirl.tumblr.com/post/142690324455/morning-morning-no-you-cannot-sleep-it-is happened and afterwards I lasted about five hours before I collapsed and slept till 7 PM. Frog, why dis.

In the bar, Charlie looked to be considering cutting him off before he'd even begun, a bobbing eyestalk the machine equivalent of a raised eyebrow when Li said to leave the bottle.

"So long as you're payin' for it, I suppose," Charlie conceded after a while. "But if anyone has t' drag your sorry unconscious carcass out, that'll be extra."

"I have a higher tolerance than you might think."

Charlie scoffed. "They all say that." He went back to cleaning a dirty glass with a dirty rag, humming something that sounded out of tune; Li shook his head and uncorked the bottle, pouring himself a glass.

He'd been truthful about one thing, at least: losing Nick would probably be too much for him to bear right then. The lie had been a game to keep him occupied, but it stopped being a game when real danger was involved. He didn't so much worry about physical danger in Nick's case - it was part of why he relied on the man so much - but mental and emotional? He couldn't protect Nick against things that were out to hurt him in that way.

Yes, Li counted potential software problems as mental and emotional. He knew he was probably a bit weird for that, but he didn't have any proper experience with machines short of "plug the pip-boy in and hope for the best" when it came to hacking. If he tried to wrap his head around the nuances and minutiae of how software translated itself into feelings and emotions and thoughts in a manner analogous to the human mind, he'd get very bored about halfway into the lecture. Better to accept that it was possible and think of Nick in human terms, he figured.

Besides, he had yet to encounter anything in their interactions that disproved it. It was only scientific of him to consider it plausible until such an event occurred, wasn't it?

Li sighed, leaning his elbows against the counter and sloshing the vodka in his glass idly. Honestly, some days it even seemed like Nick was more human than he was. The detective certainly acted the part better. But with all this synth nonsense, who could say where the line between human and inhuman really was? In his day they'd called it the technological singularity, a point of no return in the transition from human and artificial intelligence.

Some circles in his time suggested that they'd reached that point the moment RobCo was founded. Before the bombs, Angie had been researching ways to bludgeon people into accepting AI rights with legalese. Another one of her pet projects in between helping their varying-degrees-of-white neighbors with taxes.

He had to wonder if she would've made the same call he did. But then, Angie was full of righteousness. Full of action and energy. She wouldn't be brooding in a seedy bar in the middle of the afternoon, she'd be smashing faces together and getting things done.

Of all the people who could have survived, it had to be him.

"Really gonna drink that?" a voice asked behind him. "Huh. You're a braver man than I."

Li glanced back but didn't turn; Nick offered a tentative smile. His coat was draped over the crook of one arm, hands tucked into the pockets of his ill-fitting slacks. Framed by the light coming from the stairwell, he looked--

He looked like something from an old film, to be honest.

Sighing, Li reached out towards the stool next to himself just long enough to give it a pat. His right, Nick's left. Nick was a tactile sort, and Li didn't want his hair added to the casualty list of that metal right hand. "Have a seat. I'm sure Charlie won't mind if I both pay for and drink your share of the hard liquor."

"Can't say I'd mind either. These days the old taste receptors are on the fritz." Nick eased himself onto the barstool Li had indicated, his joints creaking in ways that Li was pretty sure they shouldn't. Friction, perhaps, or metal getting warped from age. Li resolved not to worry too much until Nick started rattling like a vintage hand-me-down Corvega. "Figured I'd see how you're holdin' up. You kinda left in a hurry back there."

"Mm. I did, didn't I?" Li downed his glass in one pull; it burned on the way down. A good sort of burn, he thought, but he was a bit weird. "Funny, that."

Nick went quiet for a long while, not saying a word. Li refused to admit that the silence was a tense one. "What's this about, Li?" he asked eventually.

"What, the drinking or me leaving?"

"All of it. Any of it." Nick had his head bowed when Li glanced over at him, avoiding eye contact with everything but the dingy countertop. "Y'come all this way and then, _bam_. Full stop. All that determination? Gone."

"Maybe I'm just glad to have an excuse," Li suggested.

Nick shook his head. "Nah, I don't buy that. Not all of it, at least. If you were glad, you wouldn't be drowning your guilt in this swill."

Why did he have to be so perceptive? "It could be that I like drinking, or I might be doing it because my chronic pain is flaring up. Who knows? Even I can barely tell sometimes."

"Don't give me that cock-and-bull story about how shallow you are, bud. It ain't gonna work on me."

"Ahh, my friend, you overestimate me. In truth I'm even more shallow than I think I am. If still water runs deep, then I am a shallow, rippling puddle of callousness and petty comeuppances."

It was their usual sparring, but it didn't feel right. Nick seemed to be getting that same feeling, if one were to judge it by the way he sighed and shook his head. "You don't have to keep this up around me, Li. I get why you're doin' it, but I figure you've earned the right to be tired of it, too."

"I can't help but think that seems a little bit unfair to you," Li noted. "From what I've gathered, everyone leans on you. It wouldn't be right for me to ask for the same privilege."

"Pretty sure I can take bein' leaned on, bud."

"I'm sure you could as well, but just because I can doesn't mean that I should. After all, I can just as easily go streaking through a mirelurk nest, but that doesn't make it a good idea."

Nick got a chuckle out of that. "Now there's a mental image."

"You see? Obviously I can't be in too bad of a state if I'm still coming up with things like that." Li hummed, tapping his fingers against his glass. "Although that does bring up a good point. Who does the friendly neighborhood hero turn to if everyone else is too busy asking for help to offer him a shoulder?"

"Aw hell, you're gonna make me blush."

"No, I'm serious. If you're so tied up with helping everyone else all the time, then who do you go to when you need something?"

"Not like I need much. Being a robot kinda lends itself to being wallfly levels of unobtrusive."

"Oh, nonsense. You're more of a person than I am." Silence. "Tell you what, since you've helped me out so much, it's only fair that I return the favor. Whatever needs to be done, you let me know, all right?"

"Li--"

"No arguments. I won't have it." The hand holding the glass wagged an admonishing finger at the detective. "You've helped me, and now I'll help you. One mad quest for another, and don't worry about my limits either. I've quite the tolerance for madness."

"Who says I've got a mad quest?"

"Your _dodging_. Either it's so big you're unwilling to ask, or you're hiding some dirty secret you find to be morally reprehensible."

The detective let out a snort of laughter. "Uh-huh. And if that's what my dodging says about me, what's yours say about you?"

"That I'm a high-functioning autistic," Li said casually; Nick chuckled and shook his head. "What? It's true."

"Not sayin' I doubt it. Just, ain't many people around anymore who'd even know what that is." The unsaid bit, of course, was that few people before the war had even known what it was either. Or maybe that was just what Li mentally filled in Nick's pause with.

Shrugging it off, Li primly went to pour himself another glass of vodka. Just as terrible as the first glass, but he also couldn't bring himself to care as much. "At any rate, the offer stands. I meant what I said; it's only fair." He had a feeling he'd said that once already. Had he? Oh well.

Silence reigned over the conversation after that. In the interim, Li downed his second glass as he tried to calculate how many caps it would take for Charlie to let him take the bottle with him. If he drank much more, he'd probably be too wobbly for the stairs when it came time to leave; perhaps it was best to leave early, and save the rest of his drinking for when he had a place to safely collapse in?

He could always ask Nick to carry him. Like a princess. Except Nick was twiggy and small, and Li knew himself to be a bit thicker than he looked. All the walking of late had done wonders for his lower body strength - inversely proportional to what drinking had done to his metabolism, along with his hopes of looking toned anytime soon - but it added up to him being heavier than he'd prefer. It was no small mercy that one's average bathroom scale had gone the way of the dodo bird.

Eventually he got to the point where he was so caught up in his own thoughts (and vodka) he half-forgot that Nick was even there. So when the detective spoke up again, it was a bit of a shock. "Hey," the synth said, unsure and hesitant, "d'you think we could..."

Then he trailed off. Li turned his head to blink owlishly. "Yes?"

For a second, Nick seemed to wrestle with his nerves. Or maybe his CPU had locked up, like an ancient terminal owned by one's technologically inept mother. "Mind if we, uh," he started to say, glancing at Whitechapel Charlie and the rest of the bar's various inhabitants, "mind if we take this outside? Walls have ears and all that."

Li didn't mind. He sat up a little straighter and swivelled his chair to peer over at the Handy, who was trying to clean yet another glass. "Charlie, how much for me to take the bottle with me?"

"Fifteen caps," the barkeep grunted.

"I got it," Nick cut in, fishing around in his pockets. He produced the caps from his coat after some digging and left them on the counter. It was a bit less than fifteen caps. "Good luck with the dinner rush, Chuck."

"Huh. An' here I thought I was gunna get t' extort a human. Ruinin' my fun, Nicky."

Aw. What a gentleman Nick was.

\---

It turned out that Nick wasn't actually taking him outside for a clandestine snog underneath Goodneighbor's neon lights. No, Li wasn't sure why that thought came to mind. It just did. His mind did that sometimes. Like when he zoned out halfway through a conversation with Paladin Danse because he'd been struck by the thought of the poor boy being bound to a bed with an assortment of silk ties, with one jammed into his mouth for good measure so he'd stop asking if Li was a communist or not.

On reflection, Li probably needed to get laid. Perhaps Preston would be amenable. He was certainly cute, and tall. Or maybe Sturges. He took another swig from his bottle on the way up, pondering the Commonwealth's selection of pretty men as he did. Hum.

"Sorry to drag you away from your date with intoxication," Nick said when they got out into the streets, gently pulling Li into a nearby alley. He had a sad, self-deprecating look about him, like he knew that what he was about to ask was inappropriate or generally terrible on some level. "Not about to begrudge a man his vices, just..."

"You didn't want anyone to hear. I know." Li slipped away from Nick long enough to lean against a nearby wall, stuffing one hand in his pocket while the other remained kept its hold on his bottle. "Well, you've got my attention, and I'm miraculously still coherent. No point in stalling further."

Nick inhaled, a rusty-sounding thing that he didn't even need to do, what with being a robot. So many little human quirks. "Ever heard of Eddie Winter?"

Li's nose crinkled. "The mobster?"

"Yeah, that one." The detective seemed relieved that he didn't have to explain. "I uh, I got reason to believe he's still alive. Y'know, as a pre-war ghoul."

"Huh. So, what, is he running a crime syndicate? The center of a cap-laundering scandal?"

"No, he uh... Before the war, there were these radiation trials. Lookin' for test subjects, like. He signed up as a volunteer for one. After that, he went underground-- literally. Holed himself up in a nice, well-stocked bunker to wait out the end of days."

Li peered closely at the old synth, frowning. "I don't follow."

"I was part of a... Well, actually it was old Nick, the real Nick, but anyway," Nick clutched his coat a bit tighter, "Nick Valentine was part of a task force meant to track him down. Get him locked up for good, y'know. Guy like that, he'd more than earned a few life sentences. But it never happened."

"Huh..." Li tapped the bottle to his leg as he considered. He'd liked to think he paid good attention to the news, back in the day. Sometimes he and Angie would even turn it into a drinking game if they were having a bored, lazy night in. "I seem to recall something like that. My wife wasn't a lawyer anymore at the time - only a consultant, anything else tended to piss her off - but she still had contacts towards the end, there. If I remember right, Winter got off on a plea bargain."

"That he did," Nick said. He looked... Defeated, somehow. "It's a loose end that I'd like to see tied off, is all."

It took Li a moment to process that. "You want to kill him."

"If it ain't too much trouble."

"Care to tell me why? Pardon my rudeness, but a vendetta seems a bit out of character for you."

Nick went quiet again, shuffling his feet. He wasn't making eye contact anymore. "There was a girl," he admitted after a pause. "My girl. Nick's girl. Winter had her shot, just to rub it in that he'd won. She was on the way home from work, decent neighborhood. Should've been fine, she walked home all the time."

"Sounds like a prick. I say we feed him to a bear."

The laugh Li got in return was a good sound. "Hafta get him outta his bunker first. There's a code, see. He left clues on holotapes for his goons, but the tapes are in precincts all over town."

"So we get the tapes, get in, and _then_ feed him to a bear. I don't see what the problem is."

"Heh." Nick smiled-- a real smile, tinged with sadness and relief and probably some other things but Li wasn't especially focused on details right then. "Here I thought I was supposed to be the one who was too damn nice for his own good."

"Who knows, maybe it's a pre-war thing." Or a survivor thing. Or a downtrodden, beaten, broken thing. Li didn't say any of that, though.

He had half a thought that Nick was probably thinking it too. He wasn't sure why or how, but it almost seemed like the both of them were on the same wavelength. The same key, or time signature. Notes in a chord, different but complementary. Tehee, now wasn't that a poetic little aside? How delightful.

Maybe it would be appropriate to put down the vodka before his drunken asides ended up being said aloud. He hadn't reached the point where he was babbling in Chinese yet, but-- ahh, fuck it, he'd decide whether or not to stop when he got to the hotel. That way if he passed out, at least it would be within sight of a bed, and no one would be able to say he hadn't at least tried to be responsible--

"Depression," Nick said after a couple of minutes. Li looked up and saw that the detective was staring distantly at the darkening sky. "S'what the docs said the real Nick had. Not sure if it was always there or what. No one bothered to look until after old Nick's girl died. That's why he did the brain scan thing over at CIT, thought it might help."

Ah. As much as Li would have liked to say it was possible that such a thing hadn't carried over from one body to the next, even he could tell that it probably had. If Nick were human, Li would be the first to volunteer for badgering Hancock into brewing something resembling an antidepressant. Or those chem peddlers over in Diamond City. It had to be possible, didn't it?

But not for Nick. He couldn't take anything for it. Damn, damn, _damn_. What a rotten mess.

"Oh, if only I'd poured my supply of mentats into paying attention in psychology rather than chemistry," Li lamented aloud with a mock sigh. "For what it's worth, I'd be happy to play at being a therapist for you if you need it. Just know that I'll be terrible at it."

"I appreciate the thought, Li."

"Anytime."

So much for putting down the bottle.

 


	3. don't give up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Cold hearted orb that rules the night,  
>  Removes the colors from our sight,  
> Red is grey, and yellow, white  
> but we decide which is right,  
> and which is an illusion._
> 
> hey guys I'm a nerd can you tell.
> 
> I decided to finish this because it's been nagging me, figured I could do it cleanly if I just refrained from posting all the in-between bits. There are things I want to write with Li and Nick, bigger and better things that actually have an arc and a plot that people haven't read five hundred times over. It's a little rushed, but I hit the key points all the same. The ending was what was different, what was theirs, and honestly I should've seen sooner that it was all they needed for a satisfactory conclusion to be had.
> 
> Anything else I do will be a lot less rushed, don't worry. And I'll still finish Blind Betrayal with the aftermath of what went on there before I move on.

The rest was as unpleasant as it was predictable, Li mused in hindsight.

Oh, there had been moments. Happy accidents, or at least amusing ones where unbelievable things happened. Natick Banks had been the site of one such interesting bit of happenstance, where two deathclaws - a matriarch and a smaller, reedier one with more scars and a much paler hide - tore apart an entire nest of super mutants, a small hotel full of raiders, and a goddamn Brotherhood vertibird, leaving it all to be picked through when they finally succumbed to their wounds in the middle of the carnage and flaming pieces of airship. Then somewhere around Quincy they'd found a child in a fridge of all things. But otherwise...

Well, otherwise it was unpleasant, and disheartening, and upsetting, and Li probably wouldn't have kept going if it weren't for Nick trying to soothe him by saying that he didn't have to do this, that the tapes would keep for a while if he needed a break. Which was silly, really. Of course Li needed to do it. Better to do it quickly, get it all over with so that he wouldn't have to worry about it later.

Besides, Nick did need to have it all done. It was equally as silly of him to insist that he didn't, and that Li didn't owe him a damn thing. Really, didn't he see? The whole world owed him for taking everything from him, leaving him with nothing but his own inner darkness and guilt. Nothing Li did could make up for that many years of neglect and abuse, and there wasn't a man in the world who deserved that abuse less than Nick Valentine did, so it was doubly important that it all be made up for.

A person who had been through as much as Nick had and would still sit with Li through an anxiety attack, offering the coat off his own back for warmth-- that was the sort of person Nick was. Good, in spite of everything. Kind, even though he'd received little to no kindness in return.

That was why Li shot Eddie Winter in the end, moments after saying Winter wasn't worth the ammunition, after stopping Nick from doing the same. Because a rotten old coward like him didn't deserve mercy if he was going to perpetuate the same things that the rest of the world did. No one got to call Nick a monster, a thing. Never again.

No one got to abuse the people Li cared about, not in front of him. And that made him utterly predictable, his responses following a sad formula as old as time.

He wasn't startled to realize that he was in love as he followed the detective out of the bunker, only resigned. Of course he loved Nick. By his estimation, everything about Nick was worth loving. Falling for the old synth had only been a matter of time, the facts of Nick being good and kind and wonderful piling onto each other until loving him was the only logical outcome. And logic being what it was, Li knew that it was good and right to love him, because of course it was.

But he would never ask for Nick to return the favor, because that, too, was only reasonable. He couldn't expect Nick to tie himself to someone so broken, so without morals that looking to others for clues was the only answer. It would be cruel to expect anything.

In the street outside, Nick stopped. Tipped his head back to look up at the night sky, clear and cool.

"'Breathe deep the gathering gloom'," he murmured. Then he scoffed, pulling out a cigarette and his lighter. Frowning as he tried and failed to make a spark.

Li watched him for a moment before stepping up to help, taking the lighter and working it for him. "'Watch lights fade from every room'?" Li offered.

Nick snorted. "Since when do you know what I'm quoting?"

"I had a roommate in college who would listen to that album incessantly," Li replied. Once the cigarette was lit, he handed the lighter back and smiled. There was blood on him, on both of them. It had long since dried, and between that and the cold, his skin was itching. "Surprisingly, my favorite track _wasn't_ Nights In White Satin."

"Wouldn't be so bad if it was. Good track." Nick took a long drag from his cigarette, the smoke playing over the holes in his neck. Things went quiet for a while after that, nothing but the stillness of the night to listen to without his voice. It made it hard for Li to think about anything but the echo of it in his ears.

He was hopeless. Absolutely head over heels. And that was fine.

"Thought it'd feel better," Nick said after some time. "Like... I dunno, like it'd be different somehow. Weight off my shoulders or some other bull."

"But it isn't, is it?"

"No." There was tension in what remained of Nick's jawline, in what mechanisms could manage it still in his neck. "Feels like it's all pointless, really. Nothing's changed, nothing's better. Can't even convince myself that the world's better or worse for it. Not like he was about to go back to bein' a ruthless crime lord anytime soon."

"If you need something to feel justified, just think of how he was probably going to go mad from the isolation anyway," Li told him. "Put it like that, and you can almost convince yourself that he welcomed death in the end."

"Almost." Obviously, that wasn't the problem. "It just-- I dunno what I got left, after that. The last of old Nick's life, dead and gone... What's even left anymore, when you take that away?"

The answer seemed so obvious to Li. "You," he said. "Just you."

Nick's brows drew together in a frown. "And what's that make me? What've I got that isn't his, or the Institute's?"

Oh. That hadn't been a question Li was expecting. And Nick needed an answer, one that would help, but-- but what could that be? Li knew - absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt - that Nick wasn't ready for his, his certainty. That honesty beyond a certain point would be too much for him, and that the question Nick had given him was a sign of a very fragile heart that he could easily picture cradled in his hands.

No, not fragile. He'd been shown a fault line, that was all. But a prominent one-- one that could crack with even the slightest mishandling, shattering to pieces. He had to be kind without being entirely dishonest, but without being entirely honest either. And he had to answer, because silence would be just as much of a fumble. Nick was already looking crestfallen. Turning his head away like that, with that false smile-- what was that? Resignation? In the face of being worth _nothing_?

Li bit the inside of his cheek. No, words wouldn't be enough. He had to act.

With nothing else coming to mind, Li threw his arms around the old synth and pulled him close, burying damp eyes in Nick's coat. For a split second, Nick froze. Then his good hand came up to touch his partner's arm, questioning. "Li?"

"You've got me," Li said, lifting his head long enough to look up. "And I won't have you saying that you've somehow not earned every ounce of the respect I have for you."

Nick blinked at him for a minute before being able to manage a smirk. "Won't have it, huh?"

"No, I won't." Li stepped back and gave Nick the most serious, stern look he could muster. "Never."

"What'll you do if that's how it goes anyway?"

"I'll sit on you. No, wait. I'll enlist Hancock and we'll both sit on you."

"Doesn't sound like much of a threat to me."

"Then I'll get Preston. And Piper. And we'll all sit on you and tell you that you're worth something until you believe it."

Nick chuckled. It was a good thing to hear. A vast improvement over sounding like he was about to cry, but couldn't. He pulled the cigarette from his lips and sighed, tapping the ashes out. "Damn. Guess I got no choice then."

"You're damn right you don't." Li folded his arms and huffed. "Now, after all this I think you owe me a drink at the very least."

"Sounds reasonable."

"Good. Then you won't mind that I'm going to run up a mortifyingly large tab."

The detective smiled. "Only fair, at this point."

"Has anyone ever told you that you're an absolute doormat?"

"Once or twice."

Li loved this man so much that it hurt.

 


End file.
